Questions I'd Like To Ask The Presidential Candidates #2

In its May 2008 International Security Monthly Briefing The Oxford Research Group said:

“In its analysis of trends in global security, Oxford Research Group (ORG) has argued that there are four main factors that are likely to determine patterns of insecurity in the coming decades. These are:

·         The widening socio-economic divide, leading to the marginalisation of the majority of the world’s people, even in the context of continuing economic growth.

·         The impact of climate change, especially in terms of the impact on food production and supply in the tropical and sub-tropical regions.

·         Competition over resources, especially energy resources and water.

·         Processes of militarisation, especially the tendency to use military force to maintain the status quo rather than address underlying problems.”
 

The Bush administration’s record on the environment is abysmal.

The Wilderness Society, in their May 2006 report titled “Bush Administration Record on Public Lands: Irresponsible Management of the People's Land” said:

“By and large, the Bush administration has shown less legitimate interest in environmental protection. On issue after issue, the president and his appointees have created new threats to our air, water, land, and wildlife, siding with those special interests eager to make a quick profit. A large percentage of the president's appointees represented those interests before taking office. It is up to the American people and their representatives in Congress to turn back the administration's efforts to undermine environmental protection.”

"I think this administration is not a conservative administration. I think it’s a radical administration. It represents a radical rollback of environmental policy going back to a period many, many years ago. It’s backward."-- Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Richard Nixon

"When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions." --- excerpted from a letter signed on February 18, 2004 by more than 60 leading scientists, including Nobel laureates, medical experts, and former federal agency directors, voicing their concern over the misuse of science by the Bush administration.

"Whitman said she thought they would be able to "leave America's air cleaner, its water purer and its land better protected than we had found it. That belief was short-lived."---Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia), June 12, 2005, regarding Christine Todd Whitman, Former Head of the EPA under Bush. She also called Bush's opposition to Kyoto "an early expression of the go-it-alone attitude that so offended our allies in the lead-up to the Iraq war." (Toledo Blade, April 10, 2005).

The Bush administration, based on its wrong-headed policy of “starving the beast”(meaning cutting off funds to shrink government-most famously FEMA) has systematically gutted agency after agency of our federal government.

According to former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner "It is not simply a question of benign neglect – rather, it is actual destruction," Browner said. "They are systematically dismantling the system that has brought us progress."

Bush administration ideologically driven short-sightedness has compromised our national security. The U.S. government has recognized the linkage between the state of the global environment and American national security for over a decade. According to the 1996 National Security Science and Technology Strategy  from The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy Excerpts from: "Meeting The Challenge of Global Threats"

“In 1996, for the first time, the National Security Strategy recognizes that "a number of transitional problems which once seemed quite distant, like environmental degradation, natural resource depletion, rapid population growth and refugee flows, now pose threats to our prosperity and have security implications for both present and long-term American policy."

 

Given the urgency of the issue I would ask the presidential candidates:

1. “Please define what ‘national security’ means to you”
2. “ Describe the state of the Justice Department, The EPA, OSHA and the Department of Energy.”
3. “What will you do to restore these institutions of our government?”
4. “Will you take the lead in making rapid and meaningful changes to United States environmental policy?”

More: Water and Food Security Country Profiles